


Pulcra Es, Amica Mea

by Kahvi, Roadsterguy



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadsterguy/pseuds/Roadsterguy
Summary: Among the angels there is a rumor, quite a persistent one, that the demon Crawley invented sex. It is considered the greatest insult to Creation since the Lucifer's betrayal; the pebble that started the boulder of the Fall of man rolling. A cunningly devious piece of scheming.This is not true. He did it entirely by accident.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

"God is up to something.” It wasn’t words, not the way we think of them. Nor was it a thought, projected from one essence to another. It was simply Crawley _being_ , and sharing that _being_ , but if one had to approximate it to words, this was close enough.

“Well.” The essence of Aziraphale fluctuated slightly in intensity. “Isn’t she usually? She’s the great Creator.” Aziraphale brightened. “She made a delightful thing last month, did you see it? She called it a _quasar_.” A little trill of delightful radiation.

“Yeah, I know, but this seems different. What she’s doing this week.” Her work this week was more… systematic than her previous universal period, a few hundred billion years of scattering orbs of hugely varying delight around? “All of that work on just this one little planet! The plants and the animals, and she really gave it a primo view of those stars she’s been working on. And all of the bones and oil she buried? Something’s up.” Crawley made a decision. “I’m going to go ask her about it.”

“Crawley!” Aziraphale blazed briefly. “Ask her about it? She’s _busy_. You never know when to just leave well enough alone!”

“I’m one of her creations, too! I just want to ask her a few questions.” Wasn’t that reasonable? And if not, why not? Was he really one of her creations? He thought he was, and everything was, but what created _her_? Each question begat more, and Crawly thirsted to discuss them.

“I highly advise you do _not_!” Aziraphale’s essence drew itself up into an intense focal point.

“Bah! Stay here, then.” Crawley flounced off irately. Insofar as an essence of being could flounce.

* * *

“Crawley? Again? I didn’t realize I had created an Aspect of Annoyance.” God did not look up from her work. Like most middle-aged white women, she had a particular fondness for working in clay, and was intently focused on the sculpture in front of her.

“Oi, what are you making there? It’s in your own image?” Crawley didn’t have an image. Just an essence, and it floated around, looking at the work with interest, her hands shaping the clay into a form that looked like a very rough version of her own.

“Not that it’s your concern, but yes.”

Was she making it in _precisely_ her own image? “Can’t you do a little better? You’re always complaining about your back, and the whole thing with the knees could be lot sturdier, and…”

The Ineffable One interrupted. “Would you like your _own_ form, Crawley?” She continued to stack clay vertebrae discs atop each other.

This sounded odd, her tone combined with those little furrows between her eyes. It didn’t sound like a genuine, heartfelt offer. But she _was_ God. “Whatever you think is best…”

“Oh! Oh, _now_ you’re _whatever you think is best_ , eh? After all of the _do you think_ and _maybe you should_ and _have you thought about…_ ” She held out her hand and snapped her fingers, and… everything changed. Sensations that had never intruded on his essence before swamped him. Oh, was this a _form_? A physical… body?? He felt his… length, and twitched his tail, and flicked his tongue out – and oh, what a spectrum of tastes and smells!

“Oh dear, I suppose the one thing a limbless serpent can’t do is _crawl_ , right, Crawley?” She shrugged. “It can’t ask questions, either. Go out and explore the garden.”

But why? Why no arms, no legs? Why a garden? Why these figures of clay in her own image? But he couldn’t speak in this form, either, and so he slithered off, thoughtfully, wondering why she was painstakingly crafting holes between the legs of her creations.

* * *

“You have questions.” The Aspect settled delicately on the rough log next to Crawley, smiling beatifically.

Crawley flicked his tongue irately at Lucifer. He never did trust that fellow – far too _pretty_ , far too _charming_. And he seemed to want to go right past the asking of questions and right to coming up with his _own_ answers, which seemed to miss the whole point.

“I do, too. And the Creator seems disinclined to answer them. That doesn’t seem right, does it?” He looked sadly at Crawley.

No, it didn’t, but that didn’t mean Crawley automatically agreed with Lucifer, did it?

“I’ll make a deal with you.” Lucifer leaned close to him. “I like you, Crawley. You’re the sort of free thinker that this place really needs. We just need to make her _see_. I know,” he held up his hands defensively, “ _revolt_ is such an ugly word, but it’s not like we’re casting her into eternal torment, or anything, we’re just making her _listen_ to us, for once! You’re persuasive, you make people think. Do a few things for me – help some of the angels think differently than they’re used to – and I’ll give you a form like what the Creator has?”

A form with arms and legs and a mouth. A form that wasn’t as limiting as this one. It was a diabolically tempting offer, and just to ask questions and make his fellow Aspects think? That’s what he did anyway, wasn’t it? He nodded his flat little head, hissing a _yessss_.

“Shake on it, then! Ah – or not.” Lucifer smiled wickedly. “Your word is your bond.” He reached out, placing his hand on Crawley’s head, and Crawley’s lithe, scaled body… changed. It thickened, growing hands and feet, a nose, a thicker and less agile tongue, hair on top curled and flowing like the Creator’s, small breasts like hers…

“I look…” speaking came with difficulty to this mouth, and Crawley worked his tongue and lips awkwardly, “like the Creator, not like you!”

“Well, everything but the eyes, she does a better job with those, so I just left them… and, yes, you’re in Her Image, isn’t it lovely? Now. Let’s put you to work.”

* * *

The Earth outside of the garden was unfinished, blank and empty, devoid of life. It was eerie and strange, but unlike Hell, it didn’t hurt, so Crawley was spending a more time there these days. He wasn’t allowed in the Garden – it had been subtle, but relentless, the way the Aspects turned away when he tried to go in, the way the gate was, more and more often, locked to him. He could still sneak in, and did now and then, but it wasn’t the same, not when he couldn’t _share_ the experience.

He was damned. It finally came to him, as he was wandering the blank sands. Ah. Yes. He was _damned_. That would explain why he saw Aziraphale so infrequently – and why the angel had those worried little lines on his forehead when he spoke with Crawley. Yes, the angels all had forms now, and Aziraphale’s was utterly fitting for him and utterly charming, but Crawley couldn’t talk to him about things like _that_ now.

Not that he could talk about things like that with his fellow demons, either. They didn’t like his questions. Beelzebub had stopped by to talk to him about that – _Beelzebub_ , not Lucifer. Lucifer had no time for him now. Crawley’s questions were only useful insofar as they damned the Aspects, and that was now a secondary consideration for Lucifer at best, it seemed. "Look, Crawley, these demons have a lot going on. Leave them alone, there’s a good girl.”

With little to amuse him, roaming the empty lands, he found ways to amuse himself. He made up little poems – some heartfelt, some catty speculation about Lucifer and Gabriel, some that he tried to sing out loud, his voice cracking and ranging randomly like the sand dunes around him.

He also explored the forms he was given. His tongue was equally sensitive to the air around him in either one, but in the bipedal form, it was softer, warmer, giving the varieties of air a slightly different flavor. His sly form was quick and responsive – a little too responsive, honestly, a reactive form, always afraid, reacting to fear with poison. His bipedal form was more thoughtful, more interesting, more _interested_. And it had… bits that felt rather nice. Especially the breasts – when he touched the nipples, it felt magnificent.

Was this a _damned_ thing? Something felt very impure about the burst of sensation when he pinched his nipples, when he put his fingers in the one hole of the three down below that didn’t seem to be of any use. When he moved his fingers, it feet like lazy delight, like that warm feeling Aziraphale’s presence used to give him. The sensation was rather nice, on the whole. Was it part of God’s Intelligent Design? A pleasure spot? But it was so inconveniently located!

Although… it wasn’t the only form…

The crack in the stones of the West Wall around the garden was easy enough for his sly form to slither through. He did not have to look far before finding Adam and Eve, the two creations that seemed to be the whole point of this Garden, somehow. And, yes, there was Adam - the one who wasn’t made exactly in God’s image. Adam, with that little protruding bit just below his waist that Crawley had taken for a minor upgrade – it gave Adam the ability to urinate directionally, and Crawley could think of any number of good uses for that. But if the man refrained from urinating, it seemed at just the location to make that bit on Eve feel good, and it would certainly be easier to get to with that than with fingers…

“You’re staring at Adam?” Eve sat down curiously, and Crawley cursed internally at his own lapse in being caught unawares. She did not know good and evil, at least, so she didn’t know he was evil. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you around much!”

“I’m ssssly.”

“Sly? I don’t know what that means.” She cocked her head.

“Sss not important. Wasss jussst looking at hisss differencessss from you.”

“He’s very like me, isn’t he!” She bounced on the rock, her breasts – much bigger than Crawley’s – bouncing in slight delay. “Just a little taller, and without these bouncy things. And he has that dangly bit. He has so much fun with it! Even more fun than I have with these!”

Crawley looked down curiously. This whole setup – the two forms, the similarities, the differences –this was a question of a sort, wasn’t it? And it was one he could, perhaps, finally get some sort of bloody _answer_ for! “It could perhapsss make you feel good…”

“What?” She laughed. “It does! It’s so fun to play with. I make little sculptures out of it, but then sometimes it gets stiff and I have to wait for a while before I can make sculptures again.”

“Doesss it feel good when you touch yourssssself below?”

“What?” She reached down to where he was looking, between her legs. She pressed, touched, rubbed, moving her fingers around experimentally. “It actually does! It feels nice overall, and then more nice in some places. That’s odd. How did you know that, serpent?” she asked, curiously.

“Lucky guesss.”

“Oh!” She waved a finger at him. “I think I see what you’re saying! If, when he is stiff, he could use that bit to rub me down there, and then it would be something we could do together! Everything is better with someone you love, isn’t it?”

“Yessss….” Crawley coiled uncertainly. Love. That was something that he _should_ understand, shouldn’t he? He used to be one of the beloved Aspects – an angel. But he was damned, now. He could ask Aziraphale about it; he was a proper angel. But Crawley’s questions always annoyed the angels. And sometimes damned them.

“Oh! And we could kiss at the same time. Kissing is brilliant, isn’t it! I mean… oh. You don’t have lips.” She looked at him sadly.

“I have no love,” he told her. “Sss not important for me.”

“But you should!” She jumped up. “Aren’t there lady serpents for you? Or… or man… serpents? Sorry, I’m not quite sure which you are.”

“Doesssn’t matter,” he told her, a little sharply. “I am unpaired. Let me know if thisss works, though.” He was madly curious. Had this been part of the Ineffability of the design? Or something accidental, like his nipples?

“I will.” She patted him gently on the head. “And you can find love! Don’t give up, little snake.”

There were so many things she didn’t know, aside from just good and evil. Crawley had already given up. He had sold out for a body. Sold out for his right to pester angels with questions. He slunk quietly out of the Garden. He didn’t belong there.


	2. Chapter 2

"Aziraphale?" The quartermaster looked him up and down, much in the same way you might size up a bug infestation so as to ascertain the magnitude of the infestation. "What are you doing here?"

"Reporting for duty. As per usual." Aziraphale smiled, knowing full well it didn't quite reach his eyes. Eyes were tricky, and he often wondered at Her design of them; what the purpose of such clear windows to the soul could be. The Almighty already knew his every thought and feeling, of course, and fellow angels should not distrust one another. But his was not to question, of course. Nor was it for any of the angelic host, as had been so thoroughly demonstrated recently. The lobby still smelled of sulfur.

"In the Garden?"

Ah yes, the Garden. Greatest and most beloved of Her creations; certainly the most highly prioritized. It shimmered below in blue and green and just a little brown. "That's the one. Security detail."

"That's not you, that's Uriel. He's head of security down there." The quartermaster consulted his sheet. "He's not checked in for a while, though." His brow furrowed. Perhaps, Aziraphale thought, there was something to this _expression_ business.

"No, that's just it. He's been rather busy of late. Asked me to fill in." This was not, strictly speaking, what had happened. Strictly speaking, Uriel had happened to mention that he was bored with Garden security, what with there not being anything to guard _against_ , other than the odd demon, and really, what harm could they do? _I mean_ , Uriel had said, sounding not a little frustrated, _it's all Her Creation, even the unfinished bits. It's so boring. It's not like anything can harm them. The humans, I mean. The way She goes on, you'd think they were too stupid to live. Don't tell Her I said that._ Aziraphaphale hadn't. He had, however, mentioned that he might be willing to take a few shifts for him. Just temporarily.

"Did he, now." The quartermaster looked over his sheets again. "He should have notified me."

"Yes," Aziraphale hurried, "of course! He was very apologetic about that." He hadn't been.

The quartermaster sighed. "Right. Sign here."

"What for? I've already been issued a body. This one," he added, touching it with still-unfamiliar fingers.

"Not that. Munitions." The quartermaster waved a hand, manifesting a blade of fire. It was half Aziraphale's height, the hilt startlingly cool when he took it in hand. "One flaming sword. Sign here, please."

* * *

There was a reason Aziraphale wanted to be in the Garden, and it was this: He had heard a rumor.

That wasn't a new thing, though the way the faces of the angels, which were also new, contorted when they told them, was. This particular rumor had to do with Lucifer, which explained what the faces looked like. _Expressions_. So many new terms! Before the fall, it seemed, Lucifer had been giving out bodies. Nothing unusual about that; many of his followers had changed their appearance to be more in line with his and their thinking. But Crawley - and yes, of course it was Crawley; who else would have such an interesting rumor about them - was different. Crawley didn't look dark, or sinister, or sinful. Crawley was _beautiful_.

Aziraphale should know. Love and beauty came hand in hand, as both were subjective. And, as the Almightly had described it, quantum. That was another new thing; the idea that something as changed by observation. Being observed by loved changed a subject. Aziraphale had seen Crawley, and he himself had been changed, or so it felt like. Well, he _was_ love, wasn't he? And so it stood to reason he was curious; that he wanted to see more of this angel-demon. If he was still in the garden. If he would let himself be observed.

"Crawley! Fancy meeting you here!"

Aziraphale had been trying to catch a glimpse of Crawley for... there wasn't really a good word for time yet, other than _time_ ; the bits of it, that was. The fragments of being that passed as time did. Whatever they were, there had been a lot of them. Aziraphale had seen the snake quite often, and he'd heard that was one of the forms - one of! As though having more than one form were common! At any rate, the snake that was probably Crawley appeared to move about quite freely. It seemed to Aziraphale that, were he an omnipotent being, he'd find it fairly easy to keep unwanted elements out of a garden, without having to bother with guards and swords, flaming or otherwise, but his was not... and so on and so forth. Which was to say, Crawley had a lot of time with one of the humans; the one made entirely in Her image. Eve, was her name. The other one was Adam.

And yes, on that note; the angels were random forms, it seemed; Aziraphale himself had been assigned a body like Adam. He'd often wondered if there was a hierarchy to it - he'd heard rumors that Gabriel's body, beneath that immaculate clothing, was that of the Divine. Michael's too. And why shouldn't it be - they were efficient, well-adjusted and hard working. Aziraphale had no idea what he was doing most of the time, and spent his... time-bits desperately hoping no one would figure that out. Anyway, those rumors again; they said that Crawley was of the divine. Quite a statement on Lucifer's end, if he were, Aziraphale thought.

Anyway. Now and then, when he thought himself unseen, Crawley would unwind to his other form; the bipedal one, and sun himself on the rocks outside the gates. Aziraphale caught him one morning quite unexpectedly, and nearly fell down from the Gates. He was tall, slender, clad in black so dark it absorbed all the light around him, and his curls fell down his back like the waterfalls in the Garden down walls of rock. He was beauty, observed by Love, and Love was forever changed. Was that the right way around?

It became an obsession. When night fell - this being the term for the bit of time when the sun was no longer in the sky - Crawley would lurk about in the shadows, thinking himself unseen. But love could not hide from Love, and so Aziraphale saw him. A shade of dark in the darkness, lurking among the leaves. Once, Crawley saw him, and Aziraphale had to excuse himself and run away. Unvirtuous; cowardly, but what of it? Could even the Word face love and speak truth? Such thoughts were dangerous heresy, so Aziraphale pushed them down. But he kept looking.

And so, this morning, at the start of the day, he _approached_. Smiled. Spoke. But Crowley now observed him in turn, and somewhere in the physics thereof, Aziraphale was found wanting. The vision grunted, turned to soft, sleek slyness and was gone.

* * *

_You are beautiful_ , is what he doesn't say. Over and over again, when the opportunity arises. It came out, instead, in little twitchy smiles and uncertain glances, too fleeting to hold anyone's attention. On days where he got as far as hello, he patted himself on the back, made difficult by the wings they all had now. An afterthought, God had said. Aziraphale suspected she had spent too much time on birds: getting them airborne had turned out to be more of a challenge than expected. It was only when she thought to make their bones hollow that things started taking shape. Literally. Angels didn't use their wings to fly, which made things easier, on the whole, but Aziraphale agreed they looked rather majestic.

Crawley had kept his wings. Why? None of the others had, with the possible exception of Lucifer, who didn't make much of himself these days. Aziraphale couldn't remember seeing him since the Fall. If Aziraphale's wings were majestic, Crawley's were breathtaking. The dark rainbow color of a raven's feather, a portable night sky to contrast his copper skin and hair. Aziraphale longed to touch it.

There was that. Touching. It was as new as their bodies, and though it was frowned upon by some and considered gauche, many of the Host appreciated physical interaction. Hands could be clasped. Shoulders rubbed. Genitals explored with some confusion, and, for most, a shrug of disinterest. But none seemed to need it quite in the same way Aziraphale did. As though he were a creature of the Garden, unable to exist without air or water, touch had become a requirement for Aziraphale's existence. Perhaps it was his aspect, he reasoned; to love, you had to know, and to touch, to feel, was an important part of knowing. He touched blades of grass, appreciating the finer points of the pain caused when the sharper ones cut his fingers. He tasted the blood quickly, before healing himself, looking around to check if anyone had seen. (But She always saw.) He felt the flaking shell of bark around the trees, the skin of apples. He summoned beetles and lions and kakapo-birds, letting them walk across his palm, or lick his feet, or peck his neck affectionately. He sat by the waterfall and thought of copper curls, and felt the water run cold through his fingers. Slipping away. 

He waited on the top the Gates, most evenings. He had found that if he did, sooner or later Crawley would show up, sneaking in or out, and this was where those opportunities arose so pointlessly. 

_Hello._

_You are beautiful._

_May I touch you?_

Never. Always. But there was no end to time, and they had eternity. 


End file.
